A working-class town in south Wales is a great place to have a decaliter in the pub after a hard day, another local beer parody for the return of King Arthur. A place where Kruner’s appearance is less predictable than Merlin’s resurrection. Kruner, and everyone knows about it, is just a sleek coxcomb, dressed in two annual salaries of that guy under the counter, acting as if he suspects everyone of missing his cane, on which he himself sat down casually. Hoarsely from smoked cognac, singing “… wanderers in the night…”. Soon everyone will be kicked out of the pub in the early fog, here will be the real “wanderers” (further guttural idioms in Welsh, the language of the Knights of the Round Table).
It was in such a pious place on June 7, 1940, when Tommy Woodward was trying to out-sound the air raid siren. The parents did not suspect that a quarter of a century later, their son would change his last name to Jones, either to match the dude “Engelbert Humperdinck”, or simply out of black ingratitude. At twelve, the boy will be incapacitated by tuberculosis for a couple of years, it is then that the spring will contract in him, which will make his whole life rich in women and success jump. The Tom Jones cruncher turned out to be highly unusual.
In the famous frivolous Mexican waltz, the chorus of “Delilah” is about a traitor who “stopped laughing when I felt the handle of a knife in my palm”; in “Green Green Grass Of Home”, the hero will still hang over the green, green grass outside the house, and then let them dig into it. Tom sang these and dozens of other songs with Elvis in his spare time from Vegas performances. On his own television show, Jones’ guests included such controversial idols of his youth as Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.
So who better than Tom Jones to play Tom Jones in Burton’s “Mars is Attacking!”? There’s no need to mention the triumphant return to all the airwaves of the planet with “Sex Bomb” in 1999. And so, when pandemic and pandemonium rule the ball in the United Kingdom, the restless Sir Tom Jones (have we mentioned the Knights of Camelot?) Twelve tons of music-bearing ore were deposited on the mountain (a Welsh mining term) – Surrounded By Time. The time on the cover is depicted as a roll of toilet paper in a double binding, and it really has no power over this mighty throat. Open the blast furnaces of your gramophones (or poke something in your smartphone), the trolleys are moving!
I Won’t Crumble With You If You Fall is a gentle almost-gospel in a minimalistic-psychedelic twist. Tom’s voice is envelopingly close. False appeasement. The Windmills Of Your Mind is a masterpiece by Michel Legrand, written for the famous 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair. The vocal performance, like Caravaggio’s canvases, is rich in light amid dense shadows, the phrasing is unmistakable, here and further. The sound of old synthesizers is disturbing on the verge of trip-hop.
Pop Star is a humorous electro-pop that Cat Stevens’ song has turned into. Whoever’s grandfather it is, he’s clearly mocking the whole party. No Hole In My Head, the original folk song by Malvina Reynolds, was alchemically transmuted into acid soul with a familiar primal pitch. The video for the single also deserves attention.
Talking Reality Television Blues is a gloomy recitative, in stark contrast to the author’s version of some penny-pinching nerd who fancies himself a cowboy philosopher. About how reality TV stars killed reality. Well, yes, the bloggers took revenge on them. I Won’t Lie is soulful, with apparent lightness, with the tinkle of a rural guitar turning into cello-like reverie, with a soundscape of days spent far away.
This Is The Sea is a seven-minute “blue-eyed” soul song based on the peals of an electric organ, metaphorically explaining that some people have had enough of wallowing in the shallow waters of everyday problems, it’s time to send their bleating sail into the sea of life. Something like that, in a nutshell… One More Cup Of Coffee is one of the “imperials” of Bob Dylan, the king of verbal rodeos, the Nobel Troubadour, Zimmerman with the pseudonym Sergei Petrov, even before reading Dylan Thomas. Indeed, it’s damn good even for a nasal Bob, and here it’s a diamond.
Samson And Delilah is the only song written directly by Tom in collaboration with the producers of the album: his son Mark Woodward and Ethan Jones (this one is not related). Beautifully dissected macabre spirituals. Ol’ Mother Earth, slightly tearful in Tony Joe White, turned into a frightening neo-pagan massacre. It is possible that a couple of druids are hiding at the roots of the Woodward family tree.
I’m Growing Old is just sad, obvious, and optional. Lazarus Man was written by Black folk-jazz musician Terry Calle, whose last project was a collaboration with Massive Attack, and in 1968 a couple of his compositions were included in the repertoire of a group called H. P. Lovecraft. All these ingredients and a pinch of The Doors’ meditativeness are the final number of the record.
Surrounded By Time came out as a deep, very personal, but at the same time ironically broken album. For all the obvious differences in style and temperament, comparisons with Johnny Cash of the American era are begging. I can’t think of any better recommendations for you. And let this Powerful Old Man “draw” us another pair of “sowers”!
